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every American, who reflects seriously on the difficulty of the experiment, the manner in which it was conducted, the felicity of its issue, and the fate of similar trials in other nations of the earth.

LECTURE XI.

OF CONGRESS.

THE power of making laws is the supreme power in a state, and the department in which it resides will naturally have such a preponderance in the political system, and act with such mighty force upon the public mind, that the line of separation between that and the other branches of the government ought to be marked very distinctly, and with the most careful precision.

The Constitution of the United States has effected this purpose with great felicity of execution, and in a way well calculated to preserve the equal balance of the government, and the harmony of its operations. It has not only made a general delegation of the legislative power to one branch of the government, of the executive to another, and of the judicial to the third, but it has specially defined the general powers and duties of each of those departments. This is essential to peace and safety in any government, and especially in one clothed only with specific powers for national purposes, and erected in the midst of numerous state governments retaining the exclusive control of their local concerns. It will be the object of this lecture to review the legislative department; and I shall consider this great title in our national polity under the following heads:-(1.) The constitutent parts of congress, and the mode of their appointment: (2.) Their joint and separate powers and privileges: (3.) Their method of enacting laws, with the qualified negative of the president.

(1.) By the constitution,a all the legislative powers therein *granted are vested in a congress, consisting of *222 a Senate and House of Representatives.

Art. 1. sec. 1.

Division of Congress into

The division of the legislature into two separate and indetwo Houses, pendent branches, is founded on such obvious principles of good policy, and is so strongly recommended by the unequivocal language of experience, that it has obtained the general approbation of the people of this country. One great object of this separation of the legislature into two houses, acting separately, and with co-ordinate powers, is to destroy the evil effects of sudden and strong excitement, and of precipitate measures, springing from passion, caprice, prejudice, personal influence and party intrigue, which have been found, by sad experience, to exercise a potent and dangerous sway in single assemblies. A hasty decision is not so likely to proceed to the solemnities of a law, when it is to be arrested in its course, and made to undergo the deliberation, and probably the jealous and critical revision, of another and a rival body of men, sitting in a different place, and under better advantages to avoid the prepossessions and correct the errors of the other branch. The legislatures of Pennsylvania and Georgia consisted originally of a single house. The instability and passion which marked their proceedings were very visible at the time, and the subject of much public animadversion; and in the subsequent reform of their constitutions, the people were so sensible of this defect, and of the inconvenience they had suffered from it, that in both states a senate was introduced. No portion of the political history of mankind is more full of instructive lessons on this subject, or contains more striking proof of the faction, instability and misery of states under the dominion of a single unchecked assembly, than that of the Italian republics of the middle ages, which arose in great numbers, and with dazzling but transient splendour, in the interval between the fall of the Western and the Eastern empire of the Romans. They were all alike ill-constituted, with a single unbalanced assembly. *223 *They were alike miserable, and all ended in similar disgrace.a

Many speculative writers and theoretical politicians about the time of the commencement of the French revolution, were struck with the simplicity of a legislature with a single assem

Adams' Defence of the American Constitutions, vol. iii. p. 502.

bly, and concluded that more than one house was useless and expensive. This led the elder President Adams to write and publish his great work, entitled, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States," in which he vindicates, with much learning and ability, the value and necessity of the division of the legislature into two branches, and of the distribution of the different powers of the government into distinct departments. He reviewed the history, and examined the construction, of all mixed and free governments, which had ever existed, from the earliest records of time, in order to deduce, with more certainty and force, his great practical truth, that single assemblies, without check or balance, or a government, with all authority collected into one centre, according to the notion of M. Turgot, were visionary, violent, intriguing, corrupt and tyrannical dominations of majorities over minorities, and uniformly and rapidly terminated their career in a profligate despotism.

This visionary notion of a single house of the legislature, was carried into the constitution which the French National Assembly adopted in 1791. The very nature of things, said the intemperate and crude politicians of that assembly, was adverse to every division of the legislative body; and that as the nation which was represented was one, so the representative body ought to be one also. The will of the nation was indivisible, and so ought to be the voice which pronounced it. If there were two chambers, with a veto upon the acts of each other, in some cases they would be reduced to perfect inaction. By such reasoning the National Assembly of France, consisting of upwards of one thousand members, *after a short and tumultuous debate, almost unani- *224 mously voted to reject the proposition of an upper house. The same false and vicious principle continued for some time longer to prevail with the theorists of that country; and a single house was likewise established in the plan of government published by the French convention in 1793. The instability and violent measures of that convention, which continued for some years to fill all Europe with astonishment and horror, tended to display, in a most forcible and affecting

New Ann. Reg. for 1791. Hist. p. 49.

the United

States.

clothed

light, the miseries of a single unchecked body of men,
with all the legislative powers of the state. It is very possible
that the French nation might have been hurried into the ex-
cesses of a revolution, even under a better organization of
their government; but if the proposition of M. Lally Tolendal,
to constitute a senate, or upper house, to be composed of
members chosen for life, had prevailed, the constitution would
have had much more stability, and would probably have
been much better able to preserve the nation in order and
tranquillity. Their own sufferings taught the French people
to listen to that oracle of wisdom, the experience of other
countries and ages, and which for some years they had utterly
disregarded, amidst the hurry and the violence of those pas
sions by which they were inflamed. No people, said M.
Boissy d'Anglas, in 1795, can testify to the world with more
truth and sincerity than Frenchmen can do, the dangers inhe-
rent in a single legislative assembly, and the point to which
factions may mislead an assembly without reins or counter-
poise. We accordingly find that in the next constitution, in
1795, there was a division of the legislature, and a council of
ancients was introduced, to give stability and moderation to
the government; and this idea of two houses was never after-
wards abandoned. (1)

Senate of (2.) The Senate of the United States is composed of two senators from each state, chosen by the legislature *225 thereof, *for six years, and each senator has one vote. If vacancies in the Senate happen by resignation, or otherwise, during the recess of the legislature of any state, the executive thereof may make temporary appointments, until the next meeting of the legislature, which shall then fill such vacancies. The Senate at present consists of sixty members,

a Art. 1. sec. 3.

b It was settled by the Senate of the United States, in the case of Landman, in 1825, that the state executive could not make an appointment in the recess of the state legislature, in anticipation of an approaching vacancy. He must wait until the vacancy has actually occurred before he can constitutionally appoint.

(1) If the author is right in attributing the excesses of the first French revolution to the want of a division of the legislature into two branches, the lessons of experience have taught nothing to France. The twentieth article of the existing constitution of the French Republic is as follows: -“Le peuple français delégeue le pouvoir législatif à une assemblée unique.”

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